The secret ingredient for powerful watercolours

Let's not keep it a secret any longer!

I’ve been using watercolours for two years on and off. I’ve taken a number of online watercolour courses, watched dozens of Youtube instruction clips, talked to a number of other watercolour illustrators… but no one had mentioned the secret to convenient, POWERFUL watercolours. ILLUSTRATORS: LET’S NOT KEEP IT A SECRET ANY LONGER! But first, let me tell you the problems I’ve experience with traditional watercolours.

I started off using watercolour pans:

They’re fine if you’re on the move or only have a small area to paint but trying to get any volume of the same colour is a pain. If you’re not a watercolourist let me briefly explain: you can’t take the paint straight from the pan because the strength of the colour would change. Instead, you must first pipette water onto the pan, then dip your brush into it repeatedly to transfer a suitable quantity of paint into an empty spot on your palette. If you’ve got a large area to paint, you can end up dipping your brush dozens and dozens of times to build up enough pre-mixed colour - a boring and time consuming process.

So, I moved to watercolour tubes:

You squeeze the thick paint from the tube onto your palette and mix with water. Tubes are certainly more convenient for making up a big batch of colour. Squirt, mix, paint. The down side is the expense - professional watercolours (which you need if you want to achieve really punchy colours) cost about £16 for a small 14ml tube. Worse still, paint is often wasted - it’s hard to control how much of the gluttonous paint squirts out. You also have to make sure the paint is mixed really well with the water to prevent lumps or changes to the strength of the colour as you paint. So better, but still a bit of a faff and very expensive.

But clear your desks… here’s the star of the show!

Two years into my watercolour journey, these watercolours were recommended by illustration god Chris Riddell, on his Patreon page (he’s stopping his Patreon this month and moving to Youtube, so look out for that.) They are highly concentrated, liquid watercolour. This set cost me £50 off Amazon so much cheaper per colour than tubes. And they are a joy to use.

A tiny drop of the concentrated colour in water makes up an incredibly vibrant colour (see the comic reading contortionist illustration above) and as each bottle comes with a pipette, it is really easy to control how much comes out. The only reason I wasted any was because I drastically overestimated how much concentrated colour I would need and, once properly diluted, I had enough skin tone colour to paint the entire Sistine chapel! As they are already liquid they mixed beautifully with the water. It’s a personal revelation in watercolour painting!

I hope you found this post helpful and I would love to hear any of your watercolour tips below!

Keep doodling!